Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly, née Phyllis Stewart, (born August 15, 1924, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died September 5, 2016, St. Louis), American writer and political activist who was best known for her opposition to the women’s movement and especially the Equal Rights Amendment. She was a leading conservative voice in the late 20th century and a lightning rod for fervent debate about cultural values.

Phyllis Stewart grew up in a middle-class Roman Catholic family in St. Louis, Missouri. After her father lost his job during the Great Depression, her mother worked to support the family. The valedictorian of her high-school class, Stewart received a scholarship to Maryville College of the Sacred Heart (now Maryville University of St. Louis) but found the curriculum unrigorous and transferred after a year to Washington University, St. Louis, where she paid for her tuition by working the night shift at a munitions factory. She completed a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1944 and the following year earned a master’s degree in government from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University). Following a brief stint at a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., Stewart returned to St. Louis and worked as a research librarian.

In 1949 Stewart married John Fred Schlafly, Jr., a wealthy lawyer, and the two settled in the St. Louis suburb of Alton, Illinois, where they raised six children. (He died in 1993.) Mounting a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952 on a strongly anticommunist platform, she unexpectedly won the Republican primary, but she lost the general election in a heavily Democratic district. In 1958 she helped found the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation to instruct Catholics about the dangers of communism. After serving as the head of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women (1960–64), Schlafly rose to national prominence with A Choice Not an Echo (1964), a slim self-published book that charged that Eastern elites within the Republican Party had systematically repressed grassroots conservatives at presidential nominating conventions. The book sold more than three million copies and was credited with helping propel Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, whose presidential campaign she advocated as a historical corrective, to the 1964 Republican nomination; he ultimately lost in a landslide to incumbent Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1967, after losing a divisive fight for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women (for which she had served, since 1965, as first vice president), Schlafly began publishing The Phyllis Schlafly Report, a monthly newsletter intended to mobilize her supporters and inform them about political issues and candidates. In a 1972 issue of the newsletter she announced her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which passed Congress that year. Believing that women enjoyed unique privileges that the amendment would abolish—among other things, she contended it would lead to military conscription for mothers and obligate women to financially contribute to their families—she then established the lobbying organization Stop ERA, with chapters across the country. (The group was eventually subsumed into the broader-based Eagle Forum, which Schlafly founded in 1975.) Schlafly’s well-organized campaign became a cause célèbre, and when the ERA eventually failed to be ratified by the requisite majority of states, she was widely credited with having helped to bring about its collapse.

By the late 1970s Schlafly had become an admired spokeswoman for a particular strain of antifeminist sentiment, which she delineated in the book The Power of the Positive Woman (1977). Her defense of the traditional family—in particular, the role of women as homemakers—was often met with opprobrium, however, from critics who pointed out that Schlafly’s active career seemed to be at odds with her professed beliefs. Although she never won elected office (two subsequent congressional candidacies had proved unsuccessful), she frequently served as a delegate at Republican national conventions, and into the 21st century she continued to influence the conservative movement with a nationally syndicated newspaper column, a weekly radio show, and numerous television appearances. Among her other publications are five books about strategic defense policy written with Chester Ward in the 1960s and ’70s. In addition, Schlafly received a J.D. from Washington University in 1978.